Analysis

What future for India’s Patent Act?
Médecins Sans Frontières - Video
Update on Novartis vs. Union of India, Cancer Patients Aid Association & others in relation to the interpretation of Section 3(d) of the Indian Patent Act:
Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis took the Indian government to court five years ago, in an effort to overturn Section 3(d) of the country’s Patent Act that was (...)

BACKGROUND: The Supreme Court case is the final act in a legal battle over the patentability of the salt form of the anti-cancer drug imatinib and section 3(d) of the Indian patent law that stretches back over five years. In 2006, the Indian patents office ruled that Novartis did not deserve a patent for imatinib mesylate, a salt form of a life-saving cancer drug, on the grounds that the (...)

Brief background In 1997, Novartis AG, a pharmaceutical company based in Switzerland, filed a patent application in the Chennai (Madras) Patent Controller’s office for the beta-crystalline of imatinib mesylate, brand name Glivec (Gleevec) on the ground that it invented the beta crystalline salt form (imatinib mesylate) of the free base, imatinib.
Novartis’ patent application was kept in the (...)